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GEORGIA’S LEADERS FIX HOPE GRANTS
It's no secret that politicians often make
mistakes—a lot of them.
We are all human, and we all make mis
takes, so politicians are not unique. I have
often observed, however, that elected office
holders can be extremely reluctant to admit
they have made a mistake and then do some
thing about it. That's why it was so heart
ening to see the governor and the General
Assembly recognize a serious error they made
two years ago and attempt to fix that error in
this year's session.
The misjudgment involves HOPE Grants,
financial aid that is provided through Georgia
Lottery revenues to students who take job
training courses at the state's network of
technical colleges. HOPE Grants help students
pay the tuition for classes that teach
them the skills necessary to find a
new job or get their working life
off to a successful start. Although
the grants come from the same
pot of money that funds HOPE
Scholarships in the University
System, HOPE Grants are a differ
ent form of financial aid.
Gov. Nathan Deal has said
the state will need 250,000 more
college graduates by 2020 to meet
Georgia's growing workforce needs.
About 50,000 of those graduates will have to
come from the technical colleges.
In 2011, when Deal was developing a bill
to stabilize the financially troubled HOPE pro
gram, one of the changes made was to raise
the grade point average required for a HOPE
Grant from the 2.0 level to the 3.0 level. It
worked, in terms of reducing the demand for
HOPE Grants, but it worked too well. Student
enrollment in the technical college system
dropped by almost 24,500 students the year
after the GPA requirement was raised and con
tinued to drop in the following year.
In technical colleges, as opposed to public
universities, a high GPA is not the primary
goal for a student. What is more important is
that the student learns the job skills being
taught by the technical college so that the
state has another well-trained worker.
"Technical colleges are different, technical
college students are different, the academic
setting is different," said Rep. Stacey Evans
(D-Smyrna). "The financial aid that goes
to those students should recognize those
differences."
Evans, who was able to attend college her
self because of a HOPE Scholarship, proposed
a bill during this past session to change the
GPA requirement for a HOPE Grant back to the
2.0 level so that more students could afford
job training courses. Deal saw the need for the
legislation and told his House floor leaders,
along with Evans as one of the sponsors, to
introduce a HOPE Grant bill (HB 372) reinstat
ing the former 2.0 GPA requirement.
"In recent years, Georgia has seen
a large drop in technical college
enrollment—much larger than in
our University System," Deal said.
"For some students enrolled in
a technical school, the loss of
scholarship money put higher
education out of reach."
The passage of the HOPE Grant
bill provided a good example of
bipartisan cooperation in this year's
session.
"This is a good step in the right direc
tion and will undo some of the damage that
was done two years ago," Sen. Jason Carter
(D-Decatur) said when the Senate passed HB
372.
The only legislator voting against the HOPE
bill was Rep. Charles Gregory (R-Kennesaw),
who, like Evans, represents a Cobb County dis
trict but is more of a political extremist.
Deal signed the bill into law a couple of
weeks ago. While the governor didn't say it,
he and the legislators were acknowledging and
fixing a mistake they made during the 2011
session. Let's hope they can find more mis
takes to fix next year.
Tom Crawford tcrawford@gareport.com
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